Solar Eclipse and Age Old Myths .. Don't they bother you ?

1st Aug 2008. I received a call from my friend and she said don't go out today evening from 4 pm to 6:30 pm. I asked for the reason and I got one very good innocent reply: Its solar eclipse today and it will harm your body. I paused for a moment and thought, it's not her fault she isn't from the science background. May be she has inherited this piece of knowledge from some gossip magazine, some news channel trying to raise its TRP or may be from some elderly person who do not have much time to go for latest science updates .

What irritates me most is why don't people[Lets categorize people in two major categories: 1) myth walkers , who do not want to check the source of knowledge and are very much happy with what's going around and 2) wanna be iconoclastic, who gets irritated by such myths to the level of vomiting their intestines out ] try to hunt form the right source to update their knowledge bank. Internet can be misleading at times but one can always get the required authentic information from it (it may take hours or more although ;) ).

I know it's difficult to convince your parents by giving them scientific rationale. Sometimes its intelligent not to argue with them also [I almost every time fail to do so :( ]. I know it wont harm me if I wont go out side nor will I miss any chance of winning jackpots if I don't go out during solar eclipse plus I can please most of the people around by acting in compliance with them. But the point is I don’t want to give air to such stupid myths. And I know if I wont do it this time I will never be able to do it again.

And what irritates me to the highest order is when these myth walkers try to use scientific approach to support their point. I heard someone saying "the rays from the sun gets deviated by the moon and becomes more harmful than the normal scenario." my dear rocket scientist the only way solar eclipse may ever harm you is if you watch directly to it. The retina in our eyes can not respond to pain so it can not transfer pain signals to brain and it makes it even more dangerous if you are gazing right into a highly luminous object like sun. More over what happens during the total solar eclipse when the sun gets completely covered, it becomes very dark (and if you are watching it now, the pupil of your eye will be wide open), and the moment sun comes out from behind it suddenly becomes bright and the pupil of your eye will not be able to shrink fast enough, allowing a lot of light falling on your retina, causing harm to the eyes. So always use specially designed glasses when viewing such events.

Solar system is just like other natural phenomena and one should enjoy such events more. Go out people and appreciate the beauty.

One humble appeal : please do not spread wrong information regarding anything. If you don't want to go out then don't go but don't stop others.

I know I can't change your perspective.. And I won't follow yours too..

For more information on solar eclipse follow the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse .